


mementos

by apocryphic



Series: destiny week 2017 [3]
Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Destiny Week, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 07:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11962599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apocryphic/pseuds/apocryphic
Summary: Shin takes all of Jaren's lessons to heart.---for destiny week, day 3: npcs.





	mementos

From the moment that Jaren Ward walked onto that empty trail leading to Palamon, close enough to see from the settlement, Shin Malphur started taking lessons from him. His light steps and tireless gait suggested surety; there was a simple confidence found there, and Shin mimicked the loping walk. A selfless duty, long of breath and of drive, rested in the curve of his shoulders, and Shin tried to be as soft-tongued and as straight-backed. Quiet strength that anyone noticed, provided they weren't blind to the honesty of it — this, too, Shin admired, and so he imitated.

When Magistrate Loken — _madman_ more than _magistrate_ anymore, though in later years Shin would come to understand that fear and sadness can drive any person to the brink — died with the quickest pull of a trigger that Shin would ever see, there was nothing but silence that followed. Palamon, once free of a government, then clutched in white-knuckled hands, was free again. And then Jaren stayed. The years following were kinder to them all. Whispers of Jaren's presence itself protecting them was not uncommon among the more superstitious folk making up their little slice of safety. Shin could believe it. But Shin was always the first to claim faith in their Jaren Ward.

Years passed on. Moons came and went. The Fallen grew arrogant after being thoroughly defeated time and time again by Jaren, who had long since taken to teaching and leading Palamon's hunters, always attempting to pass on knowledge of self-sufficiency. As if he still thought he was only passing through. As if any of them thought that, while hoping otherwise.

When the smoke settled in the initial fight between the Fallen bandits and Palamon, Jaren said that you can only bruise someone's pride for so long before they take up arms in anger, and resentment. Then, once this was committed to memory by Shin, Jaren added that it was this fact of nature that made it so important to make sure that there were no arms left to take up.

(In the future, Shin would understand this as a lesson, too, but not one that _he_ was being taught. No, this was what Jaren himself had learned, through experience, and through his chase.)

"How long will it take to make sure?" Shin asked him, eventually. His makeshift armor and flimsy gun did not make him feel any lesser while standing next to Jaren in his smooth armor and his sleek helmet and his Last Word. He only felt stronger for it.

Jaren did not ever say things that did not mean to be said, and was very good at making sure that what needed to be said _was_ said. He looked at Shin for a long moment, or maybe he didn't, his visor impenetrably dark. But Jaren's silent, sharp Ghost was watching him, which meant that Jaren must be, too.

"You can never be sure," Jaren said.

"So you must be vigilant?" pressed Shin, clutching his leadslinger still.

There was a burst of light in the distance — and then sharp blasts of gunfire followed. Jaren looked. Then Shin looked. The Fallen bandits, trying to get back into Palamon. A breeze stirred the scarce trees. Shin took a breath.

"Yes," Jaren said, affirming, when he was looking at Shin once more. "But most of all, you must be patient."

He told Shin to watch that side of Palamon's boundary. Shin did. The next sun, Jaren set out with their best hunters, and there was a part of Shin that yearned and cried to go with them. But he knew his duty, and it was not routing bandits. He stayed behind to help pick up the pieces, Jaren's lesson of patience echoing in his mind, while Jaren went off to be vigilant.

Three suns later, and Palamon was no more. Undone by hospitality for a stranger who never should have been.

Jaren returned and collected Shin and the handful of survivors from the ruined remains. The tear tracks seemed to be permanently etched in the ash on their faces, but there was a resolute will to survive and to have their remaining sunrises, too. They followed Jaren into the wilderness and unknown with nothing left to turn back towards even if they'd wanted. As they walked, Shin caught the tiniest, briefest exchange. First, Jaren's Ghost. Then, Jaren himself.

"...spared some, at least. Spared him. You can't —"

"I can." The angriest (yet still so calm!) that Shin ever heard him. An unwavering flame. "I was not there."

Hearing Jaren blame himself, it seemed to Shin that nobody could be vigilant forever. Not even someone as impossible as Jaren Ward.

 

* * *

 

 

But that was all _then_.

Shin learned Jaren's motions and his movements, his strength and his silence; he learned the most subtle of tricks, how to flick the barrel of a gun to have it point exactly where he wants it. He learned, hours after the bullets cut the air and he was left alone, the preciousness of a Ghost. He learned to mourn a father — already once and twice, for the third time. It was, by far, the most cutting loss of them all, and it is a loss that has not left him yet and a loss that, he knows, never truly will. He learned the want for vengeance, too. How it burns.

And then, how it burns out, when there is no fuel left for the fire.

Saying Jaren's words, as calm as a cloudless sky, to the dead, nightmare shadow of a man who'd torn through his life, does not help like he wishes it would. _Yours... Not mine._ It should be Jaren saying it. It should be Jaren. It shouldn't have ended like it did for him. He deserved better than that, Shin thinks. Of all of them, somebody like Jaren should have died grander than how he did, trying to lead Dredgen Yor from them. From him.

Shin knows it's ridiculous, that it's a boy's dream and not a man's, but he sometimes expects Jaren to come walking down an empty trail at him, when he's all alone in the wilds. When he's tracking Fallen, he expects a touch to his shoulder still, a _look, what do you see?_ A nudge in the right direction when he's lost and injured and exhausted.

Smoke lifts from the barrel of his gun, wispy and thin. Light still burns from Yor's corpse. Already, it smells like rot, clogging up his helmet's filters. It isn't right.

There's a soft noise to his side. Ghost settles into the air next to him, and plainly does not look at the dead body of the once-Guardian on the ground. Shin will not ask it to scan for anything of interest. Shin's own grief is one thing, but Jaren's Ghost will always be Jaren's Ghost first and Shin's Ghost second, regardless of the cloak and gun being passed on. Regardless of anything at all.

"What now?" says the Ghost. As if waiting for an order, or an idea, or for Shin to cry.

He's done enough crying, and besides, Jaren wouldn't want him to cry. Not after this. This should feel like absolution. This should have been something cleansing. Instead, Shin feels only a deep, aching sadness. He thinks he understands Loken a little more. He thinks he understands Yor a little more, too, and doesn't know if he wants that.

But now…

Now.

"Now," Shin says. "We stay vigilant."

 

**Author's Note:**

> _[u.1:2.7] You’re trying to tempt him. You’re feeding his anger.  
>  [u.2:3.0] The gun is a memento, nothing more._
> 
> — Excerpt from Ghost Fragment: Thorn 4


End file.
